Interfarce

Games are interactive entertainment.

That's two fairly obvious words. They should connect directly and honestly with the player. And they should entertain them. Simple enough, eh?

So why is that some games either think that pressing a single button counts as interacting, (yes thats right Japanese RPGS, I'm looking at you!) or that other games force pointless such 'interactions' on the player, BEFORE they can even play.

A lot of games seem to have front ends that either are the result of zero forethought or even worse, a seemingly wilful disregard for the players fingers and time. One of my favourite games, Chromehounds on Xbox360, is a classic example of this syndrome. On booting up, the player is asked whether they want to play online or single player. All well and good, but the single player is a tutorial that once over is never use again. Once Xbox live is selected, then the player must select his harddrive as the chosen storage media. After the choice there is a confirm box, which defaults to "no". WHY!?! Why would anyone say no, when there is only one choice..ie your hardrive. Once you have overcome this tricky obstacle you dive into the game lobby. Whoops! Not quite, first you must plough through a series of pointless "news" messages, each requiring a press of your A button to skip.... Great, more Japanese style interation...

All of these hurdles are pointless delays before you can get into playing a game. Oblivion, one of the Xbox's first hits set the right trend. It remembered your chosen storage device, and also where you were in game. You booted up and pressed start twice and continued playing, just as it should be.

In todays time pressed enviroment, with old fogey gamers like me having to cope with friends and families hectic schedules, each minute of gaming is a treasured haven at the end of the day. Each second spent faffing in lobbies or trying to coordinate settings etc, is a waste of time. Pressing "A" repeatedly for no real reason, other than to progress what would have progressed without you pressing "A" is not real interation. Every interaction I make should have an effect. Yes or no is a dialog choice, but just moving on, is not. If its complex and important dialog and you want to give time to read it, put it on a scroll or give me a pause / replay facility, but dont make me press the button just for the sake of it.

This short rant is dedicated to Eric who took the time to read my only other entry, and has inspiried me to write some more soon! I hope I havent wasted your time.

Press "A" to continue....